Kansas Public School Students Empower Vocabulary with Visual Thesaurus

Empowered Desktop by Kan-ed Makes Visual Thesaurus Available to Kansas Schools; Cooperative Purchasing Means Lower Costs

NEW YORK, January 2006 - Thinkmap, Inc. (www.thinkmap.com), a leading visualization technology firm, announced that Kansas schools can now add its award-winning Visual Thesaurus (www.visualthesaurus.com) to the Empowered Desktop by Kan-ed, an educational portal available to all students and teachers in the state. The Visual Thesaurus is an interactive dictionary and thesaurus which creates word maps that blossom with meanings and branch to related words.

The Empowered Desktop is an innovative statewide portal that consolidates teaching information, educational resources, learning applications and Internet content for students in a single-source Web environment. Kan-ed (www.kan-ed.org), a program created by the Kansas Board of Regents, provides the Empowered Desktop to all Kansas schools. Kan-ed's goal is to expand the capabilities of member institutions, specifically K-12 schools, higher education, libraries and hospitals. This includes delivering the Empowered Desktop to 750,000 constituents.

The Empowered Desktop was developed and implemented by LearningStation, a company that helps schools engage students in learning through Web-based applications and learning tools. Kansas is the first state to offer all its public and private schools the option to include the Visual Thesaurus with the Empowered Desktop by Kan-ed. Kansas has small districts spread throughout the state, so the desktop program allows schools to access resources on a large scale, even in the most rural areas.

Visual Thesaurus is a powerful dictionary and thesaurus in an online format that helps students improve vocabulary and their understanding of the English language. It contains approximately 150,000 English words and is displayed in a colorful and interactive format that has been proven to enhance learning. Through the Empowered Desktop by Kan-ed, educators get cooperative pricing to purchase Visual Thesaurus at a discounted rate.

"Visual Thesaurus is a very strong application for education and we thought it would be an excellent resource for the Kansas initiative," said Michael Freedman, President & CEO, Thinkmap. "It's a terrific asset for the students and administrators in Kansas."

Visual Thesaurus is also widely used throughout the U.S. in homes, colleges, private educational institutions, libraries, media and corporations. For more information about Visual Thesaurus, contact Michael Freedman at 212-285-8600.

ABOUT THINKMAP, INC.
Thinkmap, Inc. develops and markets software that uses visualization to facilitate communication, learning, and discovery. The company specializes in user interfaces and visualization mechanisms that allow end-users to more effectively browse and understand complex information. Thinkmap customers include Deutsche Bank, Mitre, Unisys, Pfizer, and NOAA. Thinkmap is located at 155 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012. The general phone number is 212-285-8600; Web site is www.thinkmap.com; and general email is salesthinkmap.com.

ABOUT THE VISUAL THESAURUS
The Visual Thesaurus is a dictionary and thesaurus with an intuitive interface that encourages exploration and learning for all ages. The product is available in both a Desktop Edition and an Online Edition, and is a marvelous way to improve your vocabulary and understanding of the English language. For more information, visit www.visualthesaurus.com.

ABOUT LEARNINGSTATION
LearningStation, a leading provider of customized portal solutions, focuses on helping schools authentically engage students in learning through innovative applications and web-based learning tools. LearningStation has been honored as a 2005 and 2006 SIIA Codie Award finalist, a 2003 Media & Methods Magazine Awards Portfolio recipient and a recipient of the EdNET 2002 Pioneer Award for significant contributions to the growth of education technology.